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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,783 records · Page 99

Tritium Transport Modeling at the Pore Scale in Ceramic Breeder Materials Using TMAP8

Fusion reactors depend on the blanket material to breed and release tritium at the same rate or faster than it is consumed by the fusion reaction. Cellular ceramic breeders (CCBs) are dense materials that can maintain a high tritium breeding ratio while promoting tritium release because of highly connected pores. Assessing the tritium breeding capabilities of these materials requires a combination of extensive experimental and modeling efforts. In this work, we develop and calibrate a multiphysics model of tritium transport. This novel model accounts for ceramic and pore diffusion, trapping and detrapping, and several surface reactions at the pore surface. We perform a sensitivity analysis and calibrate the model by comparing its predictions against experimental measurements of deuterium absorption. The calibrated model is then used to model tritium absorption in samples with different pore microstructures to investigate the effect of pore interconnectivity on tritium absorption. The model is part of the development of the multiscale, multiphysics framework for tritium transport [i.e., the Tritium Migration Analysis Program (TMAP8)], which is itself built on top of the finite-element multiphysics framework multiphysics object-oriented simulation environment (MOOSE). This study demonstrates some of TMAP8’s capabilities and is the first step toward assessing the tritium breeding capabilities of ceramic breeder material designs.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

A Stochastic Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Algorithm for Dynamic Load Prioritization in Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings

Increasing deployment of advanced sensing, controls, and communication infrastructure enables buildings to provide services to the power grid, leading to the concept of grid-interactive efficient buildings. Since occupant activities and preferences primarily drive the availability and operational flexibility of building devices, there is a critical need to develop occupant-centric approaches that prioritize devices for providing grid services, while maintaining the desired end-use quality of service. In this paper, we present a decision-making framework that facilitates a building owner/operator to effectively prioritize loads for curtailment service under uncertainties, while minimizing any adverse impact on the occupants. The proposed framework uses a stochastic (Markov) model to represent the probabilistic behavior of device usage from power consumption data, and a load prioritization algorithm that dynamically ranks building loads using a stochastic multi-criteria decision-making algorithm. The proposed load prioritization framework is illustrated via numerical simulations in a residential building use-case, including plug-loads, air-conditioners, and plug-in electric vehicle chargers, in the context of load curtailment as a grid service. Suitable metrics are proposed to evaluate the closed-loop performance of the proposed prioritization algorithm under various scenarios and design choices. Scalability of the proposed algorithm is established via computational analysis, while time-series plots are used for intuitive explanation of the ranking choices.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Data-Driven Co-optimization of Energy Efficiency and Indoor Environmental Quality in Commercial Buildings

In this paper, we use publicly available data of a highly instrumented building to estimate how zonal temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration are related to some key operational and environmental measurements. Subsequently, we have developed, simulated, and evaluated an optimization framework for minimizing the energy consumption of the central heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) unit while meeting zonal temperature and indoor air quality (IAQ) standards. Finally, we have evaluated the achievable energy savings for our proposed approach as compared to a baseline approach and reported significant savings potential.

Naqvi, Syed Ahsan Raza↗

MUFFSgenMC: An Open Source MUon Flexible Framework for Spectral GENeration for Monte Carlo Applications

A cosmic ray Muon Flexible Framework for Spectral GENeration for Monte Carlo Applications (MUFFSgenMC) has been developed to support state-of-the-art cosmic ray muon tomographic applications. The flexible framework allows for easy and fast creation of source terms for popular Monte Carlo applications like GEANT4 and MCNP. This code framework simplifies the process of simulations used for cosmic ray muon tomography.

Chatzidakis, Stylianos↗

Rhythm

Rhythm is a small Python framework that automates Cadence Spectre simulations from the command line. Instead of creating an ADE testbench, you'll write a Rhythm Recipe, a short, readable Python script that contains each step needed to test your circuit from setting up libraries and stimulus waveforms to setting up analyses and reading the results (in Rhythm, these steps are called stages). Need to run more than one simulation? Use a Rhythm Campaign to easily sweep across corners and test conditions with a live dashboard and multithreading support.

Quinn, Adam [Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory↗

Why Does Deep Convection Have Different Sensitivities to Temperature Perturbations in the Lower versus Upper Troposphere?

Previous studies have documented that deep convection responds more strongly to above-the-cloud-base temperature perturbations in the lower troposphere than to those in the upper troposphere, a behavior that is important to the dynamics of large-scale moist flows, such as convectively coupled waves. A number of factors may contribute to this differing sensitivity, including differences in buoyancy, vertical velocity, and/or liquid water content in cloud updrafts in the lower versus upper troposphere. Quantifying the contributions from these factors can help to guide the development of convective parameterization schemes. We tackle this issue by tracking Lagrangian particles embedded in cloud-resolving simulations within a linear response framework. The results show that both the differences in updraft buoyancy and vertical velocity play a significant role, with the vertical velocity being the more important, and the effect of liquid water content is only secondary compared to the other two factors. These results indicate that cloud updraft vertical velocities need to be correctly modeled in convective parameterization schemes in order to properly account for the differing convective sensitivities to temperature perturbations at different heights of the free troposphere.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Path Properties of Atmospheric Transitions: Illustration with a Low-Order Sudden Stratospheric Warming Model

Many rare weather events, including hurricanes, droughts, and floods, dramatically impact human life. To accurately forecast these events and characterize their climatology requires specialized mathematical techniques to fully leverage the limited data that are available. Here we describe transition path theory (TPT), a framework originally developed for molecular simulation, and argue that it is a useful paradigm for developing mechanistic understanding of rare climate events. TPT provides a method to calculate statistical properties of the paths into the event. As an initial demonstration of the utility of TPT, we analyze a low-order model of sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), a dramatic disturbance to the polar vortex that can induce extreme cold spells at the surface in the midlatitudes. SSW events pose a major challenge for seasonal weather prediction because of their rapid, complex onset and development. Climate models struggle to capture the long-term statistics of SSW, owing to their diversity and intermittent nature. We use a stochastically forced Holton–Mass-type model with two stable states, corresponding to radiative equilibrium and a vacillating SSW-like regime. In this stochastic bistable setting, from certain probabilistic forecasts TPT facilitates estimation of dominant transition pathways and return times of transitions. These “dynamical statistics” are obtained by solving partial differential equations in the model’s phase space. With future application to more complex models, TPT and its constituent quantities promise to improve the predictability of extreme weather events through both generation and principled evaluation of forecasts.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Mechanisms for an amplified precipitation seasonal cycle in the U.S. West Coast under global warming

The mean precipitation along the U.S. West Coast exhibits a pronounced seasonality change under warming. Here we explore the mechanisms for the seasonality change based on 37 climate models using moisture budget framework. The multi-model simulations show a robust enhancement of wet season precipitation over Washington-Oregon and a sharpened seasonal cycle with a stronger and narrower wet season over California. Both changes are predominantly caused by changes in the mean moisture convergence. Thermodynamic effect due to the divergence of increased moisture dominates the ‘wet-get-wetter’ seasonal enhancement over Washington-Oregon, where the climatological lower tropospheric convergence is strong. In contrast, mean zonal moisture advection due to seasonally-dependent changes in moisture gradient dominates the sharpened wet season over California. The seasonally-dependent changes in zonal moisture gradient originate from the effects of both the climatological and changes of land-sea thermal contrast on the changes in land-sea moisture contrast in different seasons under warming through the nonlinear Clausius–Clapeyron relation. More specifically, the stronger climatological land-sea thermal contrast in winter with warmer ocean than land dominates the change in land-sea moisture contrast, resulting in more moisture increase over ocean than land under warming and hence wet advection to California. However, in fall and spring, the future change of land-sea thermal contrast with larger warming over land than ocean dominates the changes in land-sea moisture contrast, inducing an opposite moisture gradient and hence dry advection to California. The sharpening seasonality adds to the complexity to water resource management in the future.

Dong, Lu↗

PANORAMA: An approach to performance modeling and diagnosis of extreme-scale workflows

Here we report that computational science is well established as the third pillar of scientific discovery and is on par with experimentation and theory. However, as we move closer toward the ability to execute exascale calculations and process the ensuing extreme-scale amounts of data produced by both experiments and computations alike, the complexity of managing the compute and data analysis tasks has grown beyond the capabilities of domain scientists. Therefore, workflow management systems are absolutely necessary to ensure current and future scientific discoveries. A key research question for these workflow management systems concerns the performance optimization of complex calculation and data analysis tasks. The central contribution of this article is a description of the PANORAMA approach for modeling and diagnosing the run-time performance of complex scientific workflows. This approach integrates extreme-scale systems testbed experimentation, structured analytical modeling, and parallel systems simulation into a comprehensive workflow framework called Pegasus for understanding and improving the overall performance of complex scientific workflows.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Designing an Optimal Sensor Network via Minimizing Information Loss

Optimal experimental design is a classic topic in statistics, with many well-studied problems, applications, and solutions. The design problem we study is the placement of sensors to monitor spatiotemporal processes, explicitly accounting for the temporal dimension in our modeling and optimization. We observe that recent advancements in computational sciences often yield large datasets based on physics-based simulations, which are rarely leveraged in experimental design. We introduce a novel model-based sensor placement criterion, along with a highly-efficient optimization algorithm, which integrates physics-based simulations and Bayesian experimental design principles to identify sensor networks that “minimize information loss” from simulated data. Our technique relies on sparse variational inference and (separable) Gauss-Markov priors, and thus may adapt many techniques from Bayesian experimental design. We validate our method through a case study monitoring air temperature in Phoenix, Arizona, using state-of-the-art physics-based simulations. Our results show our framework to be superior to random or quasi-random sampling, particularly with a limited number of sensors. We conclude by discussing practical considerations and implications of our framework, including more complex modeling tools and real-world deployments.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Coupled Hydrodynamic-Geomechanical Modelling of CO2-WAG Field Development at Farnsworth Unit: A Case Study

Abstract The SWP project is located in a mature waterflood undergoing conversion to CO2-WAG operations at Farnsworth, Texas, USA. Utilized CO2 is anthropogenic, sourced from a fertilizer and an ethanol plant. Major project goals are optimizing the storage/production balance, ensuring storage permanence, and developing best practices for CCUS. This paper provides a review of work performed toward development of a 3D coupled Mechanical Earth Model (MEM) for use in assessment of caprock integrity, fault reactivation potential, and evaluation of stress dependent permeability in reservoir forecasting. Mechanical property estimates computed from geophysical logs at selected wellbores were integrated with 3D seismic elastic inversion products to create a 3D "static" mechanical property model sharing the same geological framework as the existing reservoir simulation model including 3 major faults. Stresses in the MEM were initialized from wellbore stress estimates and reservoir simulation pore pressures. One way and two way coupled simulations were performed using a compositional hydrodynamic flow model and geomechanical solvers. Coupled simulations were performed on history matched primary, secondary (waterflood), and tertiary (CO2 WAG) recovery periods, as well as an optimized WAG prediction period. These simulations suggest that the field has been operating at conditions which are not conducive to either caprock failure or fault reactivation. Two way coupled simulations were performed in which permeability was periodically updated as a function of volumetric strain using the Kozeny-Carmen porosity-permeability relationship. These simulations illustrate the importance of frequent permeability updating when recovery scenarios result in large pressure changes such as in field re-pressurization through waterflood after a long primary depletion recovery period. Conversely, production forecasting results are less sensitive to permeability update frequency when pressure cycles are short and shallow as in WAG cycles. This paper describes initial work on development of a mechanical earth model for use in assessment of geomechanical risks associated with CCUS operations at FWU. The emphasis of this work is on integration of available geomechanical data for creation of the static mechanical property model. Preliminary coupled hydro-mechanical simulations are presented to illustrate some of the key diagnostic output from coupled simulations which will be used in later work for in depth evaluation of specific risk factors such as induced seismicity and caprock integrity.

02 PETROLEUM↗

Nuclear Nonproliferation Ontology Assessment Team (Final Report)

The Ontology Assessment Team began in May 2009 and concluded in September 2011. During this two-year time frame, the Ontology Assessment team had two objectives: (1) Assessing the utility of knowledge representation and semantic technologies for addressing nuclear nonproliferation challenges; and (2) Developing ontological support tools that would provide a framework for integrating across the Simulation, Algorithm and Modeling (SAM) program. The SAM Program was going through a large assessment and strategic planning effort during this time and as a result, the relative importance of these two objectives changed, altering the focus of the Ontology Assessment Team. In the end, the team conducted an assessment of the state of art, created an annotated bibliography, and developed a series of ontological support tools, demonstrations and presentations. A total of more than 35 individuals from 12 different research institutions participated in the Ontology Assessment Team. These included subject matter experts in several nuclear nonproliferation-related domains as well as experts in semantic technologies. Despite the diverse backgrounds and perspectives, the Ontology Assessment team functioned very well together and aspects could serve as a model for future inter-laboratory collaborations and working groups. While the team encountered several challenges and learned many lessons along the way, the Ontology Assessment effort was ultimately a success that led to several multi-lab research projects and opened up a new area of scientific exploration within the Office of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Verification.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Statistical Mechanics Modeling of Mesoscale Deformation in Metals

The research under this project focused on a theoretical and computational modeling of dislocation dynamics of mesoscale deformation of metal single crystals. Specifically, the work aimed to implement a continuum statistical theory of dislocations to understand strain hardening and cell structure formation under monotonic loading. These aspects of crystal deformation are manifestations of the evolution of the underlying dislocation system under mechanical loading. The project had three research tasks: 1) Investigating the statistical characteristics of dislocation systems in deformed crystals. 2) Formulating kinetic equations of dislocations and coupling these kinetics equations and crystal mechanics. 3) Computational solution of coupled crystal mechanics and dislocation kinetics. Comparison of dislocation dynamics predictions with experimental results in the area of statistical properties of dislocations and their field was also a part of the proposed effort. In the first research task, the dislocation dynamics simulation method was used to investigate the spatial, orientation, velocity, and temporal statistics of dynamical dislocation systems, and on the use of the results from this investigation to complete the kinetic description of dislocations. The second task focused on completing the formulation of a kinetic theory of dislocations that respects the discrete nature of crystallographic slip and the physics of dislocation motion and dislocation interaction in the crystal. Part of this effort also targeted the theoretical basis for establishing the connection between discrete and continuum representation of dislocations and the analysis of discrete dislocation simulation results within the continuum framework. This part of the research enables the enrichment of the kinetic description with information representing the discrete dislocation systems behavior. The third task focused on the development of physics-inspired numerical methods of solution of the coupled dislocation kinetics and crystal mechanics framework. To a large extent, this task has also been successfully started. We have developed a custom finite-element approach with mesh points being a subset of the underlying crystal structure. When used to predict the evolution of the dislocation system, the planar motion of dislocations is naturally captured for all slip systems, thus minimizing numerical errors and providing simple ways to investigate cross slip and dislocation reactions. Preliminary results in this direction show that we are closer than ever in building a predictive framework for dislocation dynamics and mesoscale plasticity based on the first principles of dislocation dynamics. The rest of the report gives and overview of the research performed under this project and highlights the key results and open questions left for future investigations.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE ASR Final Report on “Use of ARM Observations to Investigate the Role of Tropical Radiative Processes and Cloud Radiative Effects in Climate Simulations”

The overall objective of this ASR funded project is to investigate the role of cloud radiative effects, especially those associated with tropical thin cirrus clouds in the tropical tropopause layer, by analyzing the ARM observations combined with numerical models. In particular, we have processed and analyzed the observations from the Raman lidar at the ARM SGP and TWP sites. In the tenure of the project (8/15/2013 – 8/14/2016 and with a no-cost extension to 8/14/2017), we have been concentrating on (i) developing an automated feature detection scheme of clouds and aerosols for the ARM Raman lidar; (ii) developing an automated retrieval of cloud and aerosol extinctions for the ARM Raman lidar; (iii) investigating cloud radiative effects based on the observations on the simulated temperatures in the tropical tropopause layer using a radiative-convective model; and (iv) examining the effect of changes of atmospheric composition on the tropical lower-stratospheric temperatures. In addition, we have examined the biases in the CALIPSO-inferred aerosol direct radiative effects using ground-based Raman lidars at the ARM SGP and TWP sites, and estimated the impact of lidar detection sensitivity on assessing global aerosol direct radiative effects. We have also investigated the diurnal cycle of clouds and precipitation at the ARM site using the cloud radar observations along with simulations from the multiscale modeling framework. The main results of our research efforts are reported in the six referred journal publications that acknowledge the DOE Grant DE-SC0010557.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Multiphysics Simulation of DPC Criticality: Scoping Calculations and Coupling Strategy.

Objectives for Multi-Physics Simulations include: Provide a systematic framework for multi-process modeling — Conduct parallel model development efforts that cover the technical areas needed to support criticality consequence screening in performance assessment (PA) and that will be more closely integrated as development proceeds; Investigate separate effects — Allow partitioning of the overall waste package (WP) internal criticality multi-physics modeling effort during development activities, for study of specific processes that can later be coupled if warranted from interpretation of results; Study scaling and bounding approaches — Where possible, represent criticality consequences in PA using simplification of uncertain criticality event frequency and magnitude, bounding of consequences for screening purposes, and scaling of consequences to multiple WPs; and, Integration among participants — Multiple modeling teams (mainly SNL and ORNL, and their collaborators) will work on different parts of the in-package criticality phenomenology. Insights generated this way will be combined for more realistic coupled modeling, and for validation.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Radiation Shielding Analysis of Niowave’s Uranium Target Assembly 2 (UTA-2) Facility for Molybdenum-99 Production

Niowave is seeking to develop a commercial medical isotope production process using a low-enriched uranium accelerator-driven subcritical reactor (ADSR) system to produce molybdenum-99. As part of the US Department of Energy national laboratory support to develop low enriched uranium molybdenum-99 production technologies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is providing research and development resources to assist Niowave in the design and licensing process of its technology. The goals of this work under the radiation shielding task are to assist Niowave in developing a methodology and framework for efficient radiation shielding simulations of their Uranium Target Assembly 2 facility and to provide preliminary radiation shielding calculations and design recommendations for the facility.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

Mechanistic Modeling of Creep and Aging for Time Extrapolation in LPBF 316 SS - LANL

A polycrystal constitutive model was extended to quantify the effects heterogeneity in the microstructure, porosity, and internal stresses on the mechanical response (creep, tensile) of 316H steel processed by additive manufacturing. The starting point is a recently developed and fully calibrated advanced microstructuresensitive mechanistic constitutive model fit to literature data pertaining to conventionally processed steels. The model is embedded within the full field fast Fourier transform framework (LApx) and several hundred simulations were performed. Synthetic microstructures with different grain aspect ratios were generated using the Neper package to study the role of grain morphology on the mechanical responses. The effect of initial cell interior dislocation density, cell-wall density, precipitate content, porosity, and internal stresses on creep rates are quantified for different polycrystalline microstructures. The study allowed to prospectively quantify the role of distinct features of the microstructure on the mechanical response under tension and creep loading scenarios. Critically it is found that minor anisotropies in the tensile response of samples, emanating from the aspect ratio of grains correlated into significant differences in creep rate as a function of loading directions. The study also allows to identify initial microstructure porosities below which the materials response only moderately degraded by the initial microstructure.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Cosmic Shear Analysis in the DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey

We forecast cosmological constraints and develop a cosmic shear analysis pipeline for the DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey (DELVE). We test the effects of two different intrinsic alignment frameworks (TATT and NLA) on simulated data vectors. In addition, we examine the impact of baryon contamination and apply scale cuts to reduce its weight. We find the forecast results to be as constraining as the DES Y3 cosmological parameter measurements.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗